Old Blogs

A Shroud of Thoughts circa August 2004

Just this past June 4th A Shroud of Thoughts celebrated its tenth anniversary. It will only be a few posts after this one that I reach my 2500th post. To say that I have been at blogging for a while would be a bit of an understatement. That having been said, I am not the only person with an extremely long running blog. I know several other people who have long running blogs as well.

In fact, I know two people who have blogs that are older than A Shroud of Thoughts. Immortal Ephemera was started by Cliff Aliperti as the website Things and Stuff way back in 2002. The blog dates all the way back to April 2003. Immortal Ephemera is devoted to classic films and movie collectibles and is still going strong today.  As might be expected, Cliff numbers among the blogger friends I have had the longest.

Inner Toob is a just a tad older than A Shroud of Thoughts. It was started by Toby O'Brien on 24 April 2004. Besides being a rather old blog Inner Toob is also rather unique. It is devoted to examining television as an alternate reality. Toby is rather prolific and makes several posts a week. He doesn't really show any signs of slowing down! Like Cliff, Toby numbers among the blogger friends I have had the longest.

The Stop Button is just a little younger than A Shroud of Thoughts. It will be celebrating its 10th anniversary next month. Andrew Wickliffe published its first post on 20 February 2005. The Stop Button is devoted to film, covering everything from the Silent Era to more recent films.

Laura's Miscellaneous Musings will also be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2015. Laura's Miscellaneous Musings is a lot like A Shroud of Thoughts in that Laura writes about classic film, classic television, and a number of other topics (I particularly enjoy her Disney related posts). Laura is also very prolific. In fact, I think she posts even more than I do. Laura started her blog in July 2005.

For those cynics out there who might think that maintaining a blog for a decade is not a major achievement, I have to point out that most blogs do not last nearly that long. Way back in the Naughts, Perseus Development Corporation conducted a study on the phenomenon of blogging. They found that 66% of all blogs had not been updated in over two months and many had apparently been abandoned. About a quarter of them boasted only one post, made on the day the blog was created. I rather suspect that things have changed very little since the Naughts, which means that Immortal Ephemera, Inner Toob, The Stop Button, and  Laura's Miscellaneous Musings are positively ancient in blog terms!

The past few years it has been fashionable for many to claim blogs have declined in importance. I do not believe this for a moment. I say this for two reasons. The first is that I know of five blogs that have either reached or are close to reaching a decade of existence (the blogs I named above, as well as this one). If blogs had ceased to matter in the past few years I wouldn't think that there would be that many old blogs around. The second is that, while I cannot speak for my fellow bloggers, I can say A Shroud of Thoughts gets more hits than it ever had. If blogs had ceased to be relevant in the past few years, I would think that I would be getting fewer hits than I once did.

Now I will admit that A Shroud of Thoughts, as well as many blogs I follow, do seem to get fewer comments than they once did, but I do not think that can be taken as a sign that blogs are no longer relevant. Most bloggers I know post links to their blog posts on the various social media sites where discussion about the blog posts then ensues. Rather than blogs no longer being significant, then, I think it is just a case of discussion about specific blog posts has moved from the comment sections of blogs to social media sites. In fact, if I tallied up comments on my blog posts from Google+ and Twitter, I might actually be getting more comments on my posts than in the old days when the only way to comment on a blog post was its comments section!

Regardless, while I may be biased, I think keeping a blog going for over ten years is a remarkable achievement, and my hat is off to my fellow bloggers who have done so. I encourage you to check out their blogs! If you love classic films, classic television, and pop culture in general, you won't regret it.